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Welcome to the "iPhone: Notifications Course". Notifications are a great way to catch up on things if you've been away from your phone. In this course, you'll learn what notifications are, and how to open and delete them. If your iPhone has a physical Home button, some of the steps might be slightly different, but you can still follow along.
If you ever miss a call or message on your iPhone, it will let you know what you've missed via notifications. Other apps on your phone can send you notifications too. These might alert you to an email, a change in the weather, or even a breaking news story. Notifications appear on the screen as your phone receives them, and can disappear after a few seconds so it can be easy to miss them. Fortunately, you can read them in your iPhone's Notification Centre.
To open the Notification Centre from the Home screen, swipe down with one finger from the top centre of the screen. The swipe should always begin with your finger in the bezel, which is the area that surrounds the screen. Here, you'll see a list of your recent notifications all gathered together in one place. For instance, if you receive an email, you'll see the subject of the email, and some of the text in the body of the email. If you were out of the room when somebody called, the list will have a notification for a missed call. This notification shows you who it was that called you. And if you get a text message, the notification will show the text message so you can read it quickly. You can swipe a notification to view options, or tap it to go straight to the app that created it. Tap the email notification to open it. The email app will open so you can read the whole email. Some emails, text messages, or even missed call notifications might contain links to scam websites and phone numbers designed to steal your information. Only open notifications from apps, phone numbers, and email addresses that you recognise and trust. To return to the Notification Centre, swipe down from the top centre of the screen once more.
You'll notice that the email notification is no longer there. That's because once you've opened a notification, it will be removed from the list. Of course, sometimes you might want to get rid of the notification without reading it or having to open the app that sent it. To do this, use your finger to swipe the notification to the left. The notification will move off to the left of the screen, and Options, or Clear, will appear on the right. Tap on Options. Tapping on Mute will prevent notifications from that app appearing for either one hour or for today. Or you can tap View Settings to open another menu with more detailed options that help you change notification settings from that app. For this demonstration, we'll tap outside the Options menu to return to the Notification Centre and swipe the notification to the left to reveal the options once more. Tap Clear to delete the notification and remove it from the Notification Centre. You can also tap and hold a notification in the Notification Centre to see more options.
To tap and hold a notification, leave your finger on the screen for a moment longer than a normal tap. Taping and holding on a text message opens a preview of the whole message. You can even reply here if you like by typing your reply on your keyboard. For this demonstration, we won't respond to the text message. Instead, we'll tap the screen anywhere outside the message to return to the Notification Centre. To remove all notifications, tap the cross on the right of the screen. The cross will change to the word, Clear. Tap it to delete all the notifications. Now, to close the Notification Centre and return to what you were doing on your iPhone, simply swipe up from the bottom of the screen. For this demonstration, we'll swipe up once more to return to the Home screen. You should now be able to open and delete notifications on your iPhone. If you are unsure about any steps, you can rewind the video or click the chapter headings to jump to the start of a chapter. If you're ready to move on, there are many other courses to explore on Be Connected.